[paper] New Design Concept for the IoT Era

Pedro Toledo, Graduate Student Member, IEEE, Roberto Rubino, Graduate Student Member, IEEE, Francesco Musolino, Member, IEEE, and Paolo Crovetti, Senior Member, IEEE

Re-Thinking Analog Integrated Circuits in Digital Terms: A New Design Concept for the IoT Era

IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems—II: Express Briefs, 

Vol. 68, No. 3, March 2021

DOI:  10.1109/TCSII.2021.3049680

* DET, Politecnico di Torino (IT)

Abstract: A steady trend towards the design of mostly-digital and digital-friendly analog circuits, suitable to integration in mainstream nanoscale CMOS by a highly automated design flow, has been observed in the last years to address the requirements of the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In this context, this tutorial brief presents an overview of concepts and design methodologies that emerged in the last decade, aimed to the implementation of analog circuits like Operational Transconductance Amplifiers, Voltage References and Data Converters by digital circuits. The current design challenges and application scenarios as well as the future perspectives and opportunities in the field of digital-based analog processing are finally discussed.

Fig: a) Kuijk’s Bandgap voltage reference [i]. b) Microcontroller-based proof

of concept prototype.

REF:

[i] K. E. Kuijk, “A precision reference voltage source,” IEEE J. Solid-StateCircuits, vol. SSC-8, no. 3, pp. 222–226, Jun. 1973.